Maintaining freshness of produce and other fresh products is challenging for grocers and their suppliers. Here we discuss why, and how some of these challenges can be solved.
Service Supply Chain
Supply chain to provide service, repair, maintenance, and implementation, including spare parts supply chain, repair equipment supply chain, technician/resource management, etc.
Freshness Wars — Part One: Freshness, the Foundation of Competitiveness in Grocery
The quality of fresh food is the prime determinant of where consumers decide to shop for their groceries. Here we discuss why that is so and the role of freshness in competition for grocery market share.
Retails’ Climate Change Responsibility – Part Two: Diverse Strategies for Rapidly Reducing Transportation Emissions
We examine strategies and techniques for making near-term reductions to carbon emissions from transportation, such as improving driving behavior and vehicle performance, minimizing and optimizing returns, increasing first-attempt delivery rates, consolidation and mix-mode strategies, integrating private fleet with purchased transportation, and forecast accuracy and inventory optimization for hyperlocal distribution.
Agile Demand-Supply Alignment – Part 3B: Solution Assessments
Our assessment of ANVYL, a platform for managing out-sourced production and suppliers, monitoring and dealing with disruption in production and logistics, with integrated sourcing and procurement tools.
AI/Machine Learning for Supply Chain: Into the Future – Part One
A discussion of how AI/ML can help companies become more resilient and deal with change and uncertainty.
Agile Demand-Supply Alignment – Part 3A: Solution Assessments
The first installment of our ADSA solution assessments focuses on Alloy, a solution for CPG companies to improve their downstream visibility and build a supply chain driven by end-consumer demand.
Transparent Cost-to-Serve Customer Relationships (TCR) – Part Two: The Journey to TCR
With Transparent Cost-to-serve Customer Relationships (TCR), the salesperson has full visibility into the cost-to-serve implications of the customers’ requests, such as requests for short-supply items, special services, custom pack sizes, specific delivery dates, and frequent small quantity orders. Here we examine a potential path to achieving TCR.
AI for Supply Chain: Use Cases – Part Three
This article describes a ‘rethinking of AI’, looking at data first, establishing a hierarchy of data stores, ‘best fit’ capabilities, and reducing nervousness in supply chain decision making.
Agile Demand-Supply Alignment – Part 2G
We discuss an approach to evaluating potential Agile Demand-Supply Alignment solutions, including discovering, shortlisting, and selection processes.
Transparent Cost-to-Serve Customer Relationships (TCR) – Part One
Profit is reduced when salespeople make deals that don’t take into account supply chain constraints and inventory imbalances. This article explores this phenomenon and a new approach to bringing supply chain awareness into the sales process.
AI for Supply Chain: Use Cases – Part Two
We look at the use of AI for demand planning and forecasting, as well as inventory management and making MEIO (multi-echelon inventory optimization) work better.